IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CONTEMPT PETITION (CR) NO. 2/2001

IN THE MATTER OF:

J.R. PARASHAR AND ORS.
PETITIONERS

VERSUS

PRASHANT BHUSHAN AND ORS.
RESONDENTS

AFFIDAVIT IN REPLY ON BEHALF OF RESPONDENT NO. 3

I, Arundhati Roy, daughter of Mary Roy, resident of 2A Kautilya Marg, New
Delhi 110021, do solemnly state and affirm as under. I have received the
showcause notice issued by the Supreme Court and I have read and understood
the contents of the contempt petition in which this notice has been issued.

My reply is as under: The gravamen of the charges in the petition against
me are contained in the FIR that the petitioners say they lodged in the
Tilak Marg police station on the 14th of December 2000.

The FIR is annexed to the main petition and is reproduced verbatim below.

First Information Report dated 14.12.2000

I, Jagdish Prasar, with colleagues Shri Umed Singh and Rajender were going
out from Supreme Court at 7.00 pm and saw that Gate No. C was closed.

We came out from the Supreme Court premises from other path and inquired
why the gate is close. The were surrounded by Prasant Bhusan, Medha Patekar
and Arundhanti Roy alongwith their companion and they told Supreme Court
your father's property. On this we told them they could not sit on Dharna
by closing the gate. The proper place of Dharna is parliament. In the mean
time Prastant Bhusan said."You Jagdish Prasar are the tout of judiciary.
Again medha said "SALE KO JAAN SE MAAR DO (kill him). Arundhanti Roy
commanded the crow that Supreme Court of India is the thief and all these
are this touts. Kill them, Prasant Bhushan pulled by having caught my
haired and said that if you would be seen in the Supreme Court again he
would get them killed. But they were shouting inspite of the presence of
S.H.O and ACP Bhaskar Tilak marg. We ran away with great with great
hardship otherwise their goonda might have done some mischief because of
their drunken state. Therefore, it is requested to you that proper action
may be taken after registering our complaint in order to save on lives and
property. We complainants will be highly obliged.

Sd. Complainants

The main petition is as shoddily drafted as the FIR. The lies, the
looseness, the ludicrousness of the charges displays more contempt for the
Apex Court than any of the offences allegedly

committed by Prashant Bhushan, Medha Patkar and myself. Its contents are
patently false and malicious. The police station in Tilak Marg, where the
FIR was lodged, has not registered a case. No policeman ever contacted me,
there was no police investigation, no attempt to verify the charges, to
find out whether the people named in the petition were present at the
dharna, and whether indeed the incident described in the FIR (on which the
entire contempt petition is based) occurred at all.

Under the circumstances, it is distressing that the Supreme Court has
thought it fit to entertain this petition and issue notice directing me and
the other respondents to appear personally in court on the 23rd of April
2001, and to "continue to attend the Court on all the days thereafter to
which the case against you stands and until final orders are passed on the
charges against you. WHEREIN FAIL NOT."

For the ordinary working citizen, these enforced court appearances mean
that in effect, the punishment for the uncommitted crime has already begun.

The facts relating to the petition are as follows:

Contrary to everything the petition says, insinuates and implies, I am not
a leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.I am a writer, an independent
citizen with independent views who supports and admires the cause of the
Andolan. I was not a petitioner in the Public Interest Litigation petition
in the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project. I am not an 'interested party'.
Prashant Bhushan is not my lawyer and has never represented me.

Furthermore in all humility I aver that I do not know who the petitioners
are. That I never tried to murder anybody, or incite anybody to murder
anybody, in broad daylight outside the gates of the Supreme Court in full
view of the Delhi police.

That I did not raise any slogans against the court. That I did not see
Prashant Bhushan pulled anyone by having caught their haired and said that
if you would be seen in the Supreme Court again he would get them killed.
That I did not see Medha Patkar, leader of India's most prominent non-violent
resistance movement, metamorphose into a mediocre film actor and say "Sale
ko jaan se maar do" (Kill the bastard). That I did not notice the presence
of any "goondas" in a "drunken state". And finally, that my name is spelt
wrong.

On the morning of the 13th of December 2000, I learned that people from the
Narmada Valley had gathered outside the gates of the Supreme Court. When I
arrived at the Supreme Court at about 11.30 am, gate No. C was already
closed. Four to five hundred people were standing outside. Most of them
were adivasi people who, as a consequence of the recent Supreme Court
judgement that allowed the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam to
proceed, will lose their lands and homes this monsoon to the rising waters
of the reservoir. They have not been rehabilitated. In a few months they
will be destitute and have nowhere to go. These people had travelled all
the way from the Narmada Valley to personally convey their despair and
anguish to the court. To tell the court that in contravention of its order,
no land has been offered to them for rehabilitation and that the reality of
the situation in the Narmada Valley is very different from the one
portrayed in the Supreme Court Judgement. They asked the Registrar of the
Court for a meeting with the Chief Justice.

A number of representatives of peoples' movements in Delhi, and other
supporters of the Andolan like myself, were also there to express their
solidarity. I would like to stress that I did not see Prashant Bhushan, the
main accused in the petition, at the dharna. Medha Patkar, who was there,
asked me to speak to the people for five minutes.

My exact words were: "Mujhe paanch minute bhi nahi chahiye aapke saamne
apni baat rakhne ke liye. Mein aapke saath hoon." (I do not even need five
minutes to tell you why I'm here. I'm here because I support you.) This is
easy to verify as there were several film and television crews shooting the
event. The villagers had cloth labels hung around their necks that said
"Project Affected at 90 metres" (the current height of the dam). As time
went by and it became clear that the request for a meeting with the Chief
Justice was not going to be granted, people grew disheartened. Several
people (who I don't know or recognise) made speeches critical of the Court,
its inaccessibility to common people, and its process. Others spoke about
corruption in the judiciary, about the judges and how far removed they are
from ground realities. I admit that I made absolutely no attempt to
intervene. I am not a policeman or a public official. As a writer I am
deeply interested in peoples' perceptions of the functioning of one of the
most important institutions in this country.

However, I would like to clarify that I have never, either in my writing,
or in any public forum cast aspersions on the character or integrity of the
judges. I believe that the reflexive instinct of the powerful to protect
the powerful is sufficient explanation for the kind of iniquitous judgement
as in the case of the Sardar Sarovar Project. I did not raise slogans
against the court. I did not, as the petition claims, say "Supreme Court
bika hua hai" (The Supreme Court has sold out). I certainly did not
"command the crow that Supreme Court of India is the thief and all these
are this touts." (Perhaps the petitioners meant 'crowd'?)

I went to the dharna because I have been deeply distressed and angered by
the Supreme Court's majority—and therefore operative—verdict on the Sardar
Sarovar Project. The verdict allowed the project to proceed even though the
court was well aware that the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal had been
consistently violated for thirteen years. That not a single village had
been resettled according to the directives of the tribunal, and that the
Madhya Pradesh Government (which is responsible for 80 per cent of the
oustees) had given a written affidavit in court stating that it has no land
to resettle them. In effect, the Supreme Court ordered the violation of the
fundamental rights to life and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of
Indian citizens, most of them Dalit and Adivasi.

As a consequence of the Supreme Court judgement, it is these unfortunate
citizens who stand to lose their homes, their livelihoods, their gods and
their histories. When they came calling on the Supreme Court on the morning
of the 13th of December 2000, they were asking the Court to restore their
dignity. To accuse them of lowering the dignity of the Court suggests that
the dignity of the court and the dignity of Indian citizens are
incompatible, oppositional, adversarial things. That the dignity of one can
only exist at the cost of the other. If this is so, it is a sad and
shameful proposition. In his Republic Day speech, President K.R. Narayanan
called upon the nation, and specifically the judiciary, to take special
care of these fragile communities. He said, "The developmental path we have
adopted is hurting them, the marginalised, the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, and threatening their very existence."

I believe that the people of the Narmada Valley have the constitutional
right to protest peacefully against what they consider an unjust and unfair
judgement. As for myself, I have every right to participate in any peaceful
protest meeting that I choose to. Even outside the gates of the Supreme
Court. As a writer I am fully entitled to put forward my views, my reasons
and arguments for why I believe that the judgement in the Sardar Sarovar
case is flawed and unjust and violates the human rights of Indian citizens.
I have the right to use all my skills and abilities such as they are, and
all the facts and figures at my disposal, to persuade people to my point of
view.

The petition is a pathetic attempt to target what the petitioners perceive
to be the three main fronts of the resistance movement in the Narmada
Valley. The activist Medha Patkar, leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and
representative of the people in the valley; the lawyer, Prashant Bhushan,
legal counsel for the Narmada Bachao Andolan; and the writer (me), who is
seen as one of those who carries the voice of the Andolan to the world
outside.It is significant that this is the third time that I, as a writer,
have had to face legal harassment connected with my writing.

In July 1999, the three-judge bench in the Supreme Court hearing the public
interest petition on the Sardar Sarovar Project took offence at my essay
The Greater Common Good published in Outlook and Frontline magazines. While
the waters rose in the Narmada, while villagers stood in their homes in
chest-deep water for days on end, protesting the Court's interim order, the
Supreme Court held three hearings in which the main topic they discussed
was whether or not the dignity of the Court had been violated by my essay.
On the 15th of October 1999, without giving me an opportunity to be heard,
the Court passed an insulting order. Here is an extract:

"...Judicial process and institution cannot be permitted to be scandalised
or subjected to contumacious violation in such a blatant manner in which it
has been done by her...vicious stultification and vulgar debunking cannot
be permitted to pollute the stream of justice...we are unhappy at the way
in which the leaders of nba and Ms Arundhati Roy have attempted to
undermine the dignity of the Court. We expected better behaviour from them..."

The order contained a veiled warning to me not to continue with my
"objectionable writings".

In 1997 a criminal case for Corrupting Public Morality was filed against me
in a district magistrate's court in Kerala for my book The God of Small
Things. It has been pending for the last four years. I have had to hire
criminal lawyers, draft affidavits and travel all the way to Kerala to
appear in court.

And now I have to defend myself on this third, ludicrous charge.

As a writer I wish to state as emphatically as I can that this is a
dangerous trend. If the Court uses the Contempt of Court law, and allows
citizens to abuse its process to intimidate and harass writers, it will
have the chilling effect of interfering with a writer's imagination and the
creative act itself. This fear of harassment will create a situation in
which even before a writer puts pen to paper, she will have to anticipate
what the Court might think of her work. It will induce a sort of enforced,
fearful self-censorship. It would be bad for law, worse for literature and
sad for the world of art and beauty.

I have written and published several essays and articles on the Narmada
issue and the Supreme Court judgement. None of them was intended to show
contempt to the Court. However, I have every right to disagree with the
Court's views on the subject and to express my disagreement in any
publication or forum that I choose to. Regardless of everything the
operative Supreme Court judgement on the Sardar Sarovar says, I continue to
be opposed to Big Dams. I continue to believe that they are economically
unviable, ecologically destructive and deeply undemocratic. I continue to
believe that the judgement disregarded the evidence placed before the
Court. I continue to write what I believe. Not to do so would undermine the
dignity of writers, their art, their very purpose. I need hardly add that I
also believe that those who hold the opposite point of view to mine, those
who wish to disagree with my views, criticise them or denounce them, have
the same rights to free speech and expression as I do.

I left the dharna at about 6 pm. Until then, contrary to the lurid scenario
described in the petitioners' FIR, I can state on oath that no blood was
spilled, no mob was drunk, no hair was pulled, no murder attempted.A little
khichdi was cooked and consumed. No litter was left. There were over a
hundred police constables and some senior police officers present. Though I
would very much like to, I cannot say in good conscience that I have never
set eyes on the petitioners because I don't know who they are or what they
look like. They could have been any one of the hundreds of people who were
milling around on that day.

But whoever they are, and whatever their motives, for the petitioners to
attempt to misuse the Contempt of Court Act and the good offices of the
Supreme Court to stifle criticism and stamp out dissent strikes at the very
roots of the notion of democracy.

In recent months this Court has issued judgements on several major public
issues. For instance, the closure of polluting industries in Delhi, the
conversion of public transport buses from diesel to cng, and the judgement
permitting the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to proceed. All of
these have had far-reaching and often unanticipated impacts. They have
materially affected, for better or for worse, the lives and livelihoods of
millions of Indian citizens. Whatever the justice or injustice of these
judgements, whatever their finer legal points, for the Court to become
intolerant of criticism or expressions of dissent would mark the beginning
of the end of democracy.

An 'activist' judiciary, that intervenes in public matters to provide a
corrective to a corrupt, dysfunctional executive, surely has to be more,
not less accountable. To a society that is already convulsed by political
bankruptcy, economic distress and religious and cultural intolerance, any
form of judicial intolerance will come as a crippling blow. If the
judiciary removes itself from public scrutiny and accountability, and
severs its links with the society that it was set up to serve in the first
place, it would mean that yet another pillar of Indian democracy will
crumble. A judicial dictatorship is as fearsome a prospect as a military
dictatorship or any other form of totalitarian rule.

The Tehelka tapes broadcast recently on a national television network show
the repulsive sight of Presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the
Samata Party (both part of the ruling coalition) accepting bribes from
spurious arms dealers. Though this ought to have been considered prima
facie evidence of corruption, the Delhi High Court declined to entertain a
petition seeking an inquiry into the defence deals that were referred to in
the tapes. The bench took strong exception to the petitioner approaching
the court without substantial evidence and even warned the petitioner's
counsel that if he failed to substantiate its allegations, the court would
impose costs on the petitioner.

On the grounds that judges of the Supreme Court were too busy, the Chief
Justice of India refused to allow a sitting judge to head the judicial
inquiry into the Tehelka scandal, even though it involves matters of
national security and corruption in the highest places.

Yet, when it comes to an absurd, despicable, entirely unsubstantiated
petition in which all the three respondents happen to be people who have
publicly—though in markedly different ways—questioned the policies of the
government and severely criticised a recent judgement of the Supreme Court,
the Court displays a disturbing willingness to issue notice.

It indicates a disquieting inclination on the part of the Court to silence
criticism and muzzle dissent, to harass and intimidate those who disagree
with it.By entertaining a petition based on an FIR that even a local police
station does not see fit to act upon, the Supreme Court is doing its own
reputation and credibility considerable harm.

In conclusion, I wish to reaffirm that as a writer I have the right to
state my opinions and beliefs. As a free citizen of India I have the right
to be part of any peaceful dharna, demonstration or protest march. I have
the right to criticise any judgement of any court that I believe to be
unjust. I have the right to make common cause with those I agree with. I
hope that each time I exercise these rights I will not dragged to court on
false charges and forced to explain my actions.

The petitioners have committed civil and criminal defamation. They ought to
be investigated and prosecuted for perjury. They ought to be made to pay
damages for the time they have wasted of this Apex Court by filing these
false charges. Above all they ought to be made to apologise to all those
citizens who are patiently awaiting the attention of the Supreme Court in
more important matters.

Deponent

Verification:

I the deponent abovenamed do hereby verify that the contents of the above
affidavit are true to best of my knowledge and belief and nothing material
has been concealed therefrom.